


the world is too heavy, too big for my shoulders (come take this weight off me now)

by awkwardspiritanimals



Series: we could be heroes [3]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fitz-centric, Gen, anxiety issues related to that past violence, mentions of past blood and violence, minor blood and violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-03
Updated: 2014-06-03
Packaged: 2018-02-03 06:21:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1734290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awkwardspiritanimals/pseuds/awkwardspiritanimals
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are good days, and bad days, and days that are both; days where he can’t seem to find his breath and days where they find it for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the world is too heavy, too big for my shoulders (come take this weight off me now)

“Here, Fitzy, brought you a present,” says Trip, tossing the multi-colored cube at him. His fingers are twisting at it almost before he’s fully caught it, and the jolt of pain down from his shoulder is worth it for the twin looks of astonishment he earns from Trip and Skye when he deposits the finished puzzle on the table fifteen seconds later.

“Holy shit,” Skye says as Trip retrieves it from the table, like he needs to examine it up close to believe what he’s just seen.

“I’m out of practice. Haven’t played with one in a while.”

"That’s out of practice?" Skye asks.

"I think my record is nine and a half seconds, but I can usually do it in eleven or twelve," he says, with just a hint of a smirk.

“When I first met Fitz at the Academy, he used to have one on him all the time. He’d play with it in class when the professors were going too slow,” Jemma says from her spot next to him.

"It was something to do with my hands," he shrugs, "They didn’t much like it, but they preferred it to me tinkering in class all the time. Less likely to explode."

"He used to be able to do it without looking," Jemma adds.

"No way," says Skye, and Fitz reaches across the table to retrieve the cube from Trip, who has been mindlessly playing with it as they talked. He glances at it, spins it once to see all the sides, and then makes eye contact with Skye as he begins to twist.

A minute later, he’s done it three times and Trip is walking laps around the lab with his hands pressed against his temples and muttering _it can’t be real, it has to be magic_ while Skye rearranges the cube to make him try again.

"Show off," Jemma says, and he blushes. His demons are far away.

Three days later, they’re not so far away; they’re pressing in against his chest, and he’s struggling to breathe, his ribs aching with the effort he’s making. He had managed to stumble out into the lounge, the most wide open space on the Bus with the exception of the hanger, which is too far away. Fitz sits on the ground with his back pressed against the wall, choking air down into his lungs, watching his hands twist and untwist in his lap. He hears Jemma approaching, and knows she’s making noise for his benefit, so she doesn’t startle him when she kneels down in front of him.

"Can I touch you?" she asks, and he nods frantically, needs the points of contact. Jemma pulls his hands from his lap and laces her fingers with his, counting up and down from one to five, five to one, over and over again, until his breathing is less labored. He’s still shaking though, and he can feel the muscles in his hands straining to move in her grasp.

"Can I… Fitz, can I go get something? Are you going to be all right if I go get something to help?" she asks, and he nods, forcing his hands open enough for her to get up. He counts her footsteps away and back, and then she’s settling beside him and depositing the Rubik’s Cube in his twitching hands. His fingers twist around it immediately, his brain latching on to the task to chase the panic away. Once it’s solved, he passes it to Jemma, who scrambles it again before handing it back.

"Did you see something? Have a nightmare? Did you twist weird in your sleep and hurt something?" she asks, her usual questions, and he shakes his head.

"I wasn’t sleeping. I couldn’t get to sleep, my hands wouldn’t stop twitching. It happened kind of suddenly."

"I think it’s the nervous energy," she says, and he looks up from the cube, "You’ve always been full of it, you have to have noticed. You’d play with that at the Academy just to keep from going insane when you’d read ahead and the professors were going too slow. One morning, you forgot it and you actually had to get up in the middle of Professor Miller’s lecture to go pace in the hallway a few times.

"It used to just make you grumpy, if you didn’t have anything to do, and you’ve been pretty cooped up for the past couple of weeks, even now that I’ve given you permission to move around the Bus some. But after everything, I think all the energy kind of built up and festered. I thought that might help," she says, as he passes the cube back to her again.

"You told Trip to get it?" he asks, fingers twisting again when he’s got it back, but not as desperately. His heartbeat is almost back to normal, and the muscles in his hands are finally relaxing.

"No, but I almost kissed him when he walked in with it. Oh, don’t give me that look," she says, and Fitz realizes he’s frowning. He manages a sheepish look concerning his own jealousy.

"I’m very lucky to have you."

"Yes, you are," she replies, and then they sit in silence for awhile, passing the Rubik’s cube back and forth, until Jemma lays her head against his shoulder.

"We should probably get back to bed. Or bed and chair," he says, though he’s resting his head on top of hers and his eyes are slipping closed.

"Too tired to move," she answers, voice fading through the sentence. "Didn’t you yell at Skye and I just a week ago for doing this?" "Not yelling. Admonishing. Besides, I’m a doctor."

"So am I."

"Not a real doctor. You have a doctorate. It’s not the same thing. You just sit there and you’re pretty much useless."

"You’re not allowed to quote Disney movies to win an argument," he counters, wrapping his arm around her shoulder, tangling the fingers of his other hand with hers. The Rubik’s cube is forgotten to the side and he’s having trouble remembering why he was arguing with her in the first place.

"Shhhh," she manages, snuggling closer to his side, and he’s tired and unable to resist the warm and lovely feeling of her next to him.

The next morning, Skye’s atrocious attempt to mimic Jemma’s accent upon finding them on the floor in the lounge leaves them both laughing for minutes before they’re actually able to get off the ground and join the others for breakfast.

* * *

 

He hasn’t looked like this since he was a kid. Between the swelling in his face and his concussion, hardly anything had seemed appetizing for a couple weeks following the attack, and he’d lost a significant amount of what little weight he had in the first place. He’s gained hardly any of it back in the month or so since he resumed a more normal schedule, and it’s jarring to catch sight of himself in mirrors now. There used to be a softness at his waist, and years spent working with his hands and arms had given him at least some definition in his shoulders, but now he seems to be all pale skin stretched over prominent bones.

"At least all the bruising is gone, right?" says Skye behind him, and he drops the hem of his shirt, embarrassed at being caught.

"Yeah," he says, forcing a smile. Skye sees right through it.

"What’s bothering you? I didn’t really think you were one of those guys that worried that much about their build or whatever," she says, tilting her head at him, and he’s so unused to that still, the fact that anyone but Jemma can see through him so easily.

"You didn’t?" Maybe he can distract her from the original question.

"No. I mean, if you were I figured you’d be working out with Trip more often. So what’s bothering you?" She can be annnoyingly persistent sometimes.

"Nothing," he mutters, not meeting her eyes but able to feel her disbelief.

"Bullshit. Talk about your problems, Fitz. That is what literally everyone in the world recommends."

He doesn’t know how, really. He doesn’t know how to explain to her that this feels like just another weakness, on top of everything else. That he doesn’t even feel like he’s made of skin and bones, that he feels instead like glass and paper, infinitely fragile. That healing hasn’t made him feel less broken.

"It’s just one more reminder, I guess. Of everything that happened, and everything that’s changed because of it. It feels like a strong wind could snap me in half. I mean, look at me," Fitz says, feeling helpless and frustrated, hauling the hem of his shirt back up. There’s the sharp jut of his hipbones, the faint outline of his spine, the prominent points of his shoulder blades, all screaming at him how broken and breakable he is.

"Yeah, well, I think that strong wind would learn pretty quickly exactly who it was dealing with, and so would anyone else who tried to break you. Whatever new weaknesses you may have, Fitz, I know you’ve got the strength to deal with it. I’ve seen you do it."

"It doesn’t feel like it."

"Yeah, well, it is like that. So stop feeling sorry for yourself about this particular thing. Besides, Simmons and I have had several conversations about how jealous we are of your metabolism. Come to think of it, May was also a part of at least one of those convesations. We all agreed that it’s kind of gross that you eat as much as you do and yet don’t weigh four hundred pounds. Now come on, I’m pretty sure that if we feed you enough of Trip’s protein shakes, you’ll gain some weight or muscle or whatever. I can’t imagine any other reason he drinks them, since they taste like grass. What do you add to grass to make it taste better, do you think?"

"I have no idea," Fitz answers, and her rambling brings a smile to his face. The doubt is still there, lingering heavy in the back of his brain, and he suspects it will be for a long time. But he also suspects that Skye plans on doing her level best to destroy it, and the odds of that seem pretty good, at least at the moment.

"Which reminds me, it has been two whole days since we tried to put something unhealthy in Trip’s food. That is unacceptable and we need a plan."

When they reach the kitchen, Fitz distracts Trip with questions about his various fitness choices while Skye sprinkles crushed-up bits of Fruit Loops in his Raisin Bran. When he shouts _I don’t put crap in the temple_ three bites in, Fitz and Skye have to cling to each other in order to stay up right, and the laughter makes him feel strong.

* * *

 

He can’t sleep. He should be able to; Jemma has finally let him move back to his bunk, which is darker, quieter, more private, better in pretty much every way than his former accommodations. But what’s missing is the warm weight of her fingers between his. It had helped to hold back some of the nightmares, and when they had made it through, when he’d woken up sweating and shaking and sometimes crying, it was the warmth of her hand that had brought him back. He’s spent three nights now, staring at the ceiling of his bunk, trying to will himself to sleep.

It’s well past two in the morning, and he’s listing periodic elements alphabetically when he hears the beeping from his door that means someone is entering his code. He’d be more nervous, but there’s only one other person in the world who knows his code and would enter it with such certainy. The door opens to reveal Jemma silhouetted in the dim light of the hallway, clutching a blanket around her shoulders.

"Fitz?" she asks quietly, and he sits up, flicking on the lamp next to his bed.

"Yeah, Jemma?" He realizes that she looks almost as tired as he feels, and wonders for the first time if she misses his presence next to her at night as much as he misses hers.

"I can’t," she starts, biting her lip for a few seconds before she sighs and continues, "I can’t get to sleep. I think I miss you." Jemma stares at the floor and he smiles at her nervousness.

"Me too."

Her head comes up and she meets his eyes, smiling, “I was worried I was the only one.”

"Me too," he repeats, and then hesitates before holding up his blanket in invitation. It won’t be the first time they’ve slept in the same bed, but a lot has changed in the past couple of months. Sometimes at the Academy, they’d fall asleep studying and wake up much closer together than they had been the night before, and they’d occasionally shared when they were older during times of stress when they needed the physical comfort of the other next to them. But that was before a lot of things, and he’s never felt like he needed her presence this badly before, like sleep would be impossible without her there.

Jemma hesitates too, but then she’s dropping her own blanket on the floor and crawling in next to him. Fitz presses his shoulder against the wall to give her as much room as possible to situate herself, lying on his back and extending his arm around her. In turn, she wraps her arm over his waist and slips one foot between his, nestling her head in against his collarbone. He can feel her breathing slow almost immediately, and tries to relax into her embrace.

It’s not just that he can feel her pressed warm and heavy along the entire length of his body, though he wishes it was. It’s that there’s a new panic leaking through his head, that he needs her so much, even just to sleep. and that his weakness concerning her has only gotten worse since HYDRA and Ward and everything else.

"Fitz, I can feel how tense you are," she mumbles from his chest, and he sighs.

"Sorry. I’m just worried," he responds, and he’s glad that she hasn’t moved, that he doesn’t have to look her in the eye when he admits this, "I’m worried I need you too much. That I can’t even sleep without you, and that I’m broken and needy and that it’s unfair to you, that I need you this much. That my weakness is going to end up hurting you."

She is silent for a long time, and he thinks that maybe she fell asleep in the middle of his speech and he can put off having this conversation for at least one night.

"Maybe it will. And maybe someday my weakness will end up hurting you. Hurting each other is kind of inevitable it would seem, but in the meantime, I certainly don’t plan on letting you go. You may not have noticed, Leopold Fitz, but I’m the one who crawled in here with you. If it’s a weakness, maybe it’s a weakness we can share. And if the two of us can’t figure out how to turn a mutual weakness into some kind of strength, I’ve spent the past decade believing much too highly of our abilities."

He hadn’t even really realized, in among everything else, that they were coming up on a decade of friendship, ten years since she’d come into his life and twined her way through it, their first meeting caught between her seventeenth birthday and his. It had been shocking and bright, that first encounter when she’d ducked into his study nook, which had to be one of the most secluded in a library made up primarily of secluded nooks and crannies, and he had been baffled that anyone had managed to find it. She had calmly explained that she hadn’t understood a word of their engineering seminar that morning and neither had anybody else she’d talked to, but she had noticed that he had spent the whole class playing with his Rubik’s cube, so she assumed that he knew what he was doing and she wanted him to explain it to her. In exchange, she would give him both of the cookies she had managed to sneak out of the dining hall, and also she would help him with his biology homework, which she had noticed him muttering strings of curses at the other day in class.

He had fumbled for words, unaccustomed to having people talk to him at all, much less bright, intense girls with accents that sounded closer to home than anything he’d heard in months, who burst into his secret places like she intended to belong there. Fitz probably should have realized right then and there that he was doomed, that he would need Jemma Simmons for so much longer than the duration of this one particularly difficult biology assignment, but he’d been dazzled, by her, by the prospect of cookies, by her request for help on something he was good at, by the fact that she’d noticed him at all.

"I should have known, I think, that first time we met," he says, translating his train of thought into words.

"Known what?" she asks sleepily, curling tighter against him.

"That I would need you this much. That you would be so important to me. You, Jemma Simmons, are very important to me."

"Go to sleep, Fitz. I’ll be here in the morning, and all the days after that, weakness or no weakness."

He smiles, listens to her breathing, soft but steady, until he drifts off. The next morning, he wakes up to find her heavy and warm and half on top of him, and he grins like an idiot at the sight and feel of her until she wakes up to the buzzing of his alarm. Jemma groans and turns it off, stretching up to press a kiss to his jaw before cuddling back against him and mumbling that they were going back to sleep, doctor’s orders, and Coulson and the rest of the world were just going to have to deal with it.

His weakness and his fear of it is still there, blowing across his thoughts like black smoke, but he believes in dazzling, brave Jemma Simmons and her promise that they’ll figure it out together, just like they always do. So he counts her heartbeats against his until he drifts off again, content to stay nestled up against her warmth for at least a while longer, away from weaknesses and the world and whatever else it might have to throw at them.

* * *

"That was fun. We definitely need to do that again," says Trip, and Fitz would laugh more, but he’s having to support quite a bit of Trip’s weight as he helps him back to his room, because it turns out that Antoine Triplett, S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and grandson of a Howling Commando, is a total lightweight.

The team had gone through two tough weeks, and so when Skye had climbed onto the Bus following their lastest mission brandishing two large bottles, they had all gathered in the lounge together. May had excused herself after about an hour, but the rest of them had gone on for longer, until Coulson, slurring but able to support himself, had ordered them all to bed. Fitz and Simmons had been mostly alright, but Skye and Trip were well on their way to drunken ballad singing, and had been for a while. Rolling their eyes, the scientists had each grabbed one of them to help them back to their rooms.

"That thing Coulson can do, that’s so amazing," Trip slurs, and Fitz is much better off than he is, but things are a little fuzzy and bright at the edges of his vision, and it takes a few seconds before he figures out what the other man is talking about. "The naming the Howling Commandos after twelve shots thing? It’s kind of scary to be honest."

"Says the dude who didn’t even slow down naming monkeys until he was like 15 shots in, and that was only because you were starting to run out of monkeys any of us had heard of."

"Yeah, well, I’m a Scot," Fitz responds, which is what he’s been saying all night in response to the various comments on his drinking poweress. They’ve reached Trip’s bunk and Fitz allows him three tries before he figures out that it’s his grandfather’s name with 3s instead of Es and punches it in for him.

"You’re good people, that’s what you are, Fitz. You know what, come here," Trip says, and suddenly Fitz finds himself pulled into a tight one-armed hug by the bigger man. Four months ago, Fitz could never have imagined Antoine Triplett hugging him, but so much has changed in that time that it’s not even really awkward once he gets over his initial shock. Trip has one arm around Fitz and the other braced against the wall to balance himself, and Fitz wraps the arm he’d been using to support Trip down the hallway tighter around him.

"You’re good people, Fitz. You and Simmons, good people, very cute together. I can’t believe May guessed the exact day you got together," Trip says, swaying slightly in the hug.

"I can’t believe you guys took bets on when we would get together," Fitz responds, only slightly grumpy.

"May must be magic. Like, I don’t even believe in magic, and I’m pretty sure she’s magic. May is magic, you and Simmons are very cute, all good people," says Trip, and then he breaks the hug, smiling at Fitz for a few moments before lurching forward suddenly and planting a firm kiss against his forehead. Fitz is surprised and unsure exactly how to react, but he appreaciates the gesture nonetheless, can feel warm affection filling his chest. "Go to bed, Trip. I don’t envy you your hangover tomorrow morning," Fitz says with a smile, giving him a slight push into his bunk.

"Good people," Trip says one more time before he closes his door. Fitz laughs and heads to his bunk, pausing in the doorway to look at Jemma, who has already made herself at home on his mattress. She moves towards the wall as he climbs in next to her, and presses kisses against his jaw and his cheekbone before settling her lips against his for long seconds.

"What?" she asks with a smile when she pulls away to see what he is sure is a dopey grin on his face.

"Nothing. I’m just drunk and happy and feeling incredibly lucky about a lot of things, not least of which is the fact that a beautiful woman is kissing me in my bed," he responds, and tugs her down for another kiss, and it’s still fairly new and he wonders if it will ever stop feeling this perfect, the pressure of her against him and the way he can feel her mouth still curled into a smile against his.

"Go to sleep, Fitz, we’ll have hungover Skye to deal with tomorrow," Jemma says, snuggling down against his chest. He wraps an arm around her, and nods off with the smell and pressure and warmth of her dominating his senses.

He wakes up sweating and gasping for air, trying to blink the image of Grant Ward’s fist descending towards him out of his mind. Over the past few months, Fitz had gotten fairly good at knowing which nights would contain nightmares and which ones would be peaceful, but he hadn’t seen this one coming at all; he knows he’s too shaken to go back to sleep, so he carefully removes himself from Jemma’s embrace and pads down the hall to the lounge.

Fitz is just pouring the second cup of tea when May emerges from the direction of the cockpit, still in her clothes from that day, making enough noise to alert him to the fact that she’s coming without waking any of the others. He wonders if it’s difficult for her to tone down the instinct to move quietly. She silently retrieves the honey from the fridge and adds it to her tea with a nod of thanks, taking the seat next to him.

"Couldn’t sleep?"

"Not with all of you making such a racket," she answers, and they both know she’s lying, but he plays along anyway.

"To be fair, that was mostly Trip and Skye."

"And I’m sure you did your best to dissuade them."

"It was too amusing to even try," he says, and she rolls her eyes at him from behind her drink. They drift in and out of conversation as they sit; Fitz has learned in the past few months that May doesn’t want to talk about what’s keeping her up so much as she just enjoys having someone to talk to at all. He keeps meaning to ask her what she did before he became a fellow late night tea drinker, but is a little afraid of the answer. Their terrors don’t always match up, of course; he’s spent plenty of nights drinking tea by himself, playing around on his tablet or working in the lab, and he knows May has too, but they seem to have developed a sort of sense about the other, and more often than not one of them will wander out to the lounge to find a pot of tea waiting.

"So which one was it?" May asks finally, and Fitz feels a wave of gratitude that she understands that she doesn’t want to talk about what is keeping her awake but he does, that he needs to tell someone for fear that he’ll explode otherwise.

"I just keep seeing him, getting ready to land one final blow, to end it. And he swings and it almost connects, and then it starts all over again. Over and over and over again, until I wake up," he says, and he can’t meet her eyes while he talks, "Some days, I feel like a ghost, you know? I was so sure I was going to die, and I look around and think I must have died because I was absolutely going to. But I didn’t. I didn’t die, and yet there’s these moments where I’m so sure I must have, and I feel weak and barely there, like pieces of me are missing, and I wonder if it will ever stop. I’m tattered and broken and I hate it, how I wake up in the night crying, I hate how scarred I am by not dying. It just feels like I’m made of scars and weaknesses.”

He can feel her watching him for a long time before she speaks.

"You hate it because how can you protect anyone when you feel this fragile," she says, and his eyes snap up to hers. He should have known, he realizes, should have known that May would understand exactly why he hates it so much, the rolling and terrible weakness inside of him. It’s why these nights are helpful in ways that talking to the others aren’t, because he knows that, despite all their differences, her terrors are the same as his. He knew it when Ward was attacking him and he knew it when she reached out to bracket his ribs with her fingertips after scaring him the first night they did this and he knows it now, after listening to her make noise as she came down the hallway toward him to avoid scaring him again and as she says the things he is thinking aloud.

"Does it ever go away?" he asks, and May smiles softly.

"No," she says, and he appreciates her honesty even as the truth stings him, "You just have to fight it. You find the strength within yourself, and whatever strength you’re missing you go find. We’re all broken and battered, because that’s what being alive does to you, especially in our line of work. Having a team, having friends and people you care about, means that you can be weak sometimes and still survive it. Love is the only real tool we have when we feel like we’re composed only of our weaknesses. I forgot that for a long time, but this team has reminded me. You reminded me, because you looked at Grant Ward and said _hit me again_ , and you did it for all of us.”

"I shouldn’t be so full of weaknesses that it spills out onto all of you."

"Do you want me to wake up the people on this plane right now and ask them if they mind that you’re weak sometimes? If they aren’t terrified by their own weakness? We’re all strong and we’re all weak, but we’re all together, and that’s what is important. And we are all still together because of you, and the fact that you decided that we were all worth saving at the expense of yourself. You’re the one who told us to take care of each other."

It had been his last wish, when he’d stood between them and Ward, because he could try to save them in that moment but would need them to save each other in all the moments afterward. Driven to his knees, Jemma’s pleas for him to run still ringing in his ears, he had been unable to run or walk and there had been no one left to carry him as his ribs gave under Ward’s strikes and his blood flowed freely down his face. And then there had been, May with her Icer and Jemma with her gentle fingers, and the team rising up around him as he recovered. There’s a great rush of affection filling him for all of them in that moment.

Trip, who can’t hold his alcohol, who tugs him into impromptu hugs, who read him _Moby Dick_ while his concussion made the words spin in front of his eyes, who pressed firm and baffling kisses against his forehead when drunk.

Skye, who joined the book club enthusiastically, who lay her head against his thigh while she laughed at Trip, swaying as he attempted to lift his fourth shot to his lips, who had started a pool on when he and Jemma would get together.

Coulson, who could name every Howling Commando no matter how drunk he was, who had died for his belief in heroes and looked at Fitz like he was one.

Jemma, always by his side, who had spent weeks sleeping in an uncomfortable chair so that she could tangle her fingers with his, who presses dizzingly perfect kisses against his lips, who wraps herself around him like a promise not to let him fall apart.

And May, who fought her instincts to avoid scaring him, who drinks tea with him and lets him talk about his nightmares, who explains his thoughts and fears for him when can’t find the words himself, who will not let him dissolve into his own weaknesses.

They will carry him when he can’t walk, and he’ll try to do the same for them, and he can’t contain a smile as the sense of togetherness fills his chest with heat. Fitz tries to hide the grin behind his mug, but he knows May catches it when she answers with a smile of her own.

"You had better get back to bed. If you think I’m going to deal with grumpy, exhausted you tomorrow morning in addition to hungover Coulson, Skye and Trip, you could not possibly be more wrong."

"Thanks. For the conversation, and for… everything else," Fitz says, draining his tea.

"Thank you for the tea, and for everything else," May says back, and he can hear the sink running so she can wash out their cups and the kettle as he ducks back into his bunk. He slips back in next to Jemma, and she curls around him almost immediately.

"Nightmare?" she mumbles from his chest, still mostly asleep.

"Yeah," he answers back, pressing a kiss against her hair.

"Talk to May?"

"Yeah."

"Good. Sleep now."

"Definitely," he answers with a smile, finding her hand with his and sliding his fingers through hers. As he drifts off, he draws strength from her warmth and the knowledge of the others on the Bus around them, and tries to give them back whatever strength he has.

* * *

He had needed to come. The security system they had to deal with was too complicated for him to talk any of the others through disabling it, so he’d followed Trip, May and Coulson into the building while Skye and Jemma ran things from the Bus. Fitz had disabled the alarm system and gotten the three of them through the heavy door, and then waited by the panel he’d rewired to let them back out. That’s where the three guards had found him, and the Icer in his hand hadn’t done him much good.

He doesn’t know where the gun is now. The first hit from the man obviously in charge had sent a cascade of blood down his face, and through his panic he wonders if he had succeeded where Grant Ward had failed in breaking Fitz’s nose. The taste of it sits metallic and heavy in his mouth as he struggles to force air into his lungs; he’s trying not to cry but can’t tell if he’s succeeding or not. Two of the thugs who had found him are holding his arms behind him, and his left shoulder is screaming in protest of the awkward angle.

Another hard backhand snaps his head to the side, and the man squats down to be even with Fitz’s face where he’s been forced to his knees. For a moment, the bald man is gone, replaced with Ward’s scowling face and dark hair, and Fitz has to bite back a wave of nausea. No one is coming to save him, because they’re trapped behind the door he was supposed to open for them; his comm is lying in shattered pieces near the door, where it had been tossed after it was yanked out of his ear.

"Where are your friends, agent?" the man asks, holding on to Fitz’s chin to force him to make eye contact.

He can’t speak through the panic, but he wishes he could. He thinks that maybe the fear in the man’s eyes when he explained exactly where and who his friends are would be nice, a distraction from the pain and his own fear swirling through his head. All Fitz can manage is to spit blood at his face and choke half a breath into his lungs, Ward’s voice echoing in his head. Whatever unexplainable reason Ward had had for not killing him, this man doesn’t have it; he wipes the blood and spit off his face and delivers another blow that would have sent Fitz to the ground if not for the thugs holding his arms.

"I don’t believe that was the answer to my question, and I would strongly advise you not to do it again. Now, where are you friends?" the man asks again, seizing a handful of Fitz’s hair to tug his head upwards and hold it in place for another hit.

Three things happen next: the door to the room bursts inward with a bang, the man releases Fitz, and Antoine Triplett’s voice rings out.

"Right here, asshole," he says, and May has already dropped three of the man’s thugs before anyone can react.

The two other men holding Fitz release him to join the fray, and he manages to force his uncooperative limbs to crawl so he can collapse against the wall rather than the floor, forcing air down into his lungs. Trip drops the thugs as they rush towards him, and then sets in on the boss; the man is big and powerful, and he doesn’t stand a chance against Trip, who takes him down in two furious punches, completely disregarding the Icer in his hand. Coulson and May deal with the last few bad guys, and Trip reaches down to pull a shaking Fitz to his feet.

"You all right? No, stupid question, don’t answer that. Come here, Fitzy," he says, and he pulls Fitz in tightly, wrapping long arms around him.

He realizes he wasn’t crying before, because he’s crying now and he would have noticed this, aching sobs torn from his chest and hot tears down his face. His head is pounding and the taste of blood is heavy in his mouth and he cannot stop sobbing, his face pressed against Trip’s shoulder. But he can breath again, his throat opening up, the panic subsiding little by little.

"I’ve got him, I’m going to get him back to you," he hears Trip say, and Fitz pulls back to lean against the wall, sniffling, "Simmons is going sort of insane in my ear, with Skye accompanying her. We should get you back to her ASAP. Can you walk?" he asks, and Fitz makes it exactly two steps before Coulson and Trip have to catch him underneath the arms.May leads the way, and the other two help him out to the SUV. Trip keeps his arm around his shoulders the whole ride; his breathing is returning to normal, but he hasn’t stopped shaking and his nose is still bleeding pretty heavily.

Jemma and Skye are waiting for them when they reach the Bus, and Jemma has her hands on his face as soon as he manages to lift himself out of the SUV, her eyes bright with unshed tears as she looks him over. He smiles softly, the best he can manage, and Coulson sends them off towards the med bay so Jemma can clean him up and assess his injuries. May brings him a clean shirt, and Jemma helps him into it after she cleans the blood off his face and chest.

"Fitz? Are you ok?" she asks gently as she helps him with the buttons, and he tries to force the blank look out of his eyes. He’s suprised when she reaches out and brushes a tear off his cheek, because he hadn’t realized he was crying again.

"No," he whispers, "No. I’m sorry," and a sob breaks through on the last word. Jemma immediately steps into him where he’s sitting on the edge of the bed and pulls him close, his forehead resting against her shoulder, hands spread warm over his back.

"I’m sorry, I’m sorry," he whispers, eyes squeezed tightly shut, and he can feel her shake her head where it’s resting against his.

"Don’t you dare apologize. Don’t you dare. When you’re being clingy, I tell you, don’t I?" and he should have known that she would understand why he was apolgizing without him specifying, "This is not one of those times, and it never will be."

He doesn’t know how long they stay like that, but he doesn’t pull away until he has run out of tears and he’s got his breathing under control. When he does lean back finally, she follows him just enough to press her lips to his softly before smiling at him.

"Ok?" she asks, and when he nods, her smile grows, "I love you."

"I love you, too," he answers, pulling her back to him for one more kiss, interrupted when she brushes his nose and he hisses in pain.

"Sorry. Your shoulder might swell, and your face is going to have some rather bad bruising, or at least parts of it, but your nose, miraculously, isn’t broken. Must be made of steel." "Feels like it’s made of bruises," he mumbles, and Jemma laughs before kissing him again, careful of his injuries. They break apart when there’s a knock at the door of the pod, and look up to see a smirking Trip standing in the doorway.

"Sorry to interrupt, wanted to check and make sure Fitzy was all right. Concussion? Broken nose?"

"Neither. But we knew he had a thick skull," says Jemma with a grin. Fitz tries to look offended, but he’s distracted by the fact that Trip has changed clothes from the ones he was wearing during the mission. Those are probably ruined, he realizes.

"Sorry about bleeding all over you," he says, looking down at his hands, embarrassed. He hears Trip’s footsteps across the pod, but he’s still surprised when he feels the fist, lifting gently underneath his chin until he meets Trip’s eyes.

"Fitzy, it was a leather jacket and a white t-shirt that I’m pretty sure I purchased at a rest stop in Kentucky. The list of things more important to me than that outfit is astronomically long, and your emotional well-being is pretty close to the top of said list, got it?" he says, and once he removes his fist, Fitz nods with a small smile.

"Good. Now, we ordered pizza. Or really, Skye went on a pizza shopping spree. She wasn’t sure what your favorite kind of pizza was, and apparently during times of emotional distress, Skye likes to shop, probably to feel in control or something. And since she couldn’t really duck out to the mall, she took it out on the pizza shop. I’m pretty sure the owner is going to hang her picture next to the counter, since she bought two of basically every kind imaginable. The stack is taller than she is, and I’m counting on you to help me put at least a dent in it, Fitzy. We’re all out in the lounge with the leaning tower of pizza and several cases of beer. If you want though, me or Simmons could bring some back to you."

"I thought you didn’t put crap in the temple?" says Fitz, and Trip clutched at his chest in mock offense.

"How dare you, Fitzy. That is the national food of my people you are calling crap. It would be like me insulting tea, or as I like to call it, harbor garnish. You coming out, or you want me to bring back your favorite?" he asks, ducking Fitz’s playful swing with a grin.

"I’ll come out. Just… give me a few minutes?" he says, and Trip nods, surprising Fitz by reaching out and ruffling his hair before disappearing down the hallway.

"And to think, you didn’t like him when you first met," Jemma says, helping him to stand and giving him one more look over.

"Yeah, well, I’m a jealous person. I’m not proud of it," he says, leaning down to press a kiss against her hairline. She laughs, wrapping her arm around his waist, fingers bunching his shirt. They stand quietly for a few minutes before she stretches up to press a firm kiss against his jaw to get his attention.

"You’re amazing," she says softly, before a smile creeps onto her face, "Almost as amazing as Trip, really," she continues, laughing.

"I got the girl, didn’t I?" he answers, leaning down to capture her lips with his.

"Come on," she says when they finally break apart, slighly breathless, "I’m hungry, and I know you are as well."

They make their way down the hallway to where the other four have settled in the lounge around a stack of pizza boxes that is pretty impressive, if not quite as big as Trip had said. Skye makes room for the two of them on the couch she’s sitting on, and Coulson hands them both plates. It takes a bit of digging through the boxes, but eventually they both settle back with their food and May retrieves beers from the cooler next to her for them.

Fitz holds the beer against his cheek for a while before opening it, and it’s swelling just enough that he has to fold the pizza carefully while eating, but he manages fine. He listens silently as Skye and Trip bicker playfully about the amount of pizza she had gotten, a fight which Coulson ends by telling them all about the mission where he’d worked undercover at a pizza parlor for a couple months; Trip is quick to declare this the best mission ever and Skye asks Coulson exactly how much free pizza he had eaten during those months.

"Too much," he answers, and Trip is immediately shaking his head.

"No such thing, AC. No such thing."

"I can’t believe you can say that with this mountain staring you in the face," says May, gesturing to the pile of pizza boxes dominating the table.

"Fitzy and I are going to demolish this, right?" Trip says, and Fitz raises his bottle with a smile in acknowledgment.

It feels strange but right, he thinks, to be here with them, joking and trading stories, even with what had happened today. He thinks that he should be somewhere, curled into the fetal position and crying, he should be somewhere trying to deal with his panic, he should desperately want to escape anything and everything, but he doesn’t. The panic is still there, sitting heavy in the back of his brain, and he can tell he’s not going to sleep much tonight, but the warmth of them chases it away, holds it back, makes it managable in ways he doesn’t think it would be without them.

"How did you guys get back through the door?" he asks, suddenly, and whatever conversation that he hadn’t been paying attention to halts quickly, "It’s just, I assumed nobody was coming for me because I wasn’t there to open the door."

"You think something like a reinforced steel door with a state of the art security system is going to keep us from rescuing you, Fitzy?" asks Trip with a smile.

"Trip and I got out our pocket knives when we heard you get grabbed, and cut wires in the panel until it disengaged and May could force it open," says Coulson.

"That shouldn’t have worked," says Fitz, picturing the panel in his mind.

"It did."

"But it shouldn’t ha-"

"Fitz, you’re not supposed to question miracles," says Coulson with a laugh.

"I’m a scientist, sir. It’s my job."

"And what does your Catholic mother have to say about that?" Coulson asks with a raised eyebrow.

"She asks that I not do it in church, sir," Fitz answers and the whole group dissolves into laughter around him.

It’s in both his nature and his job description to question miracles, among many other things, but he can’t find it in himself to question this. It’s good, to be here with this group of people, laughing, with beer and an outrageous amount of pizza. He is full of weaknesses, now more so than ever, but they pull together the tattered edges of him. There have been days where the weight of everything has driven him to his knees, and they have been there to pull him back up every time.

He’s pulled away from his thoughts by Jemma pinching his side softly, and he looks down at her with a smile.

"That’s your thinking face," she observes with a smile.

"Just thinking about how grateful I am to be here. With them. With you," he says, kissing her softly.

"Gross," says Skye when she notices them, "Science cooties."

"Don’t they both have science cooties, since they’re both scientists?" asks May, and Fitz stops kissing Jemma for a moment so they can both laugh about super secret spy expert Melinda May saying the word cooties.

"I mean they’re going to give me science cooties. Go sit on Trip’s couch if you’re going to do that,” says Skye, and Trip shakes his head.

"I don’t want science cooties either," he says, "Really, it is kind of gross now that there’s no chance I’ll win any money because the two of you kiss."

"AC, make them stop.

"They’re not hurting anyone," says Coulson, sitting back to sip his beer with a shrug.

"Trip, which is grosser: Fitzsimmons kissing or just how much of a hopeless romantic Coulson is?"

"It’s close, but it’s definitely hopeless romantic Coulson," Trip answers. Fitz pulls away from Jemma just enough to roll his eyes and whisper, “I retract my previous statement.”

"No you don’t," she whispers back before capturing his lips again. He doesn’t bother breaking the kiss again until he runs out of air. Jemma cuddles back down against his side after retrieving her pizza from where she’d set it on the table, and he hands his plate to Skye to get him more so he doesn’t have to lose the warmth of her against him. Skye rolls her eyes but gives him back a full plate, and he settles back down next to Jemma, letting the conversation surround him.

There are good days, and bad days, and days that are rolling, twisting mixtures of both, but they are all of them present in those days, refusing to let him break apart.

**Author's Note:**

> The whole theme of this series has been the idea that a hero’s journey is from both weakness-to-strength and strength-to-weakness, and that’s what I tried to look at here as well, the different ways that Fitz is weak and strong and the ways he has become weak and strong.
> 
> My apologies about the fact that this isn’t very good. I was frustrated with my own abilities to write what I wanted to write, and that affected it. But it is finished now, and I am putting it out here for your enjoyment or derision, I suppose.
> 
> Title comes from Rubik’s Cube by Athlete. And yes, I took the title from a song called Rubik’s Cube and then gave Fitz a Rubik’s Cube. I’m very clever.
> 
> AoS head canons that appear here:
> 
> Fitz is really good at Rubik’s cubes
> 
> Trip refers to Fitz almost exclusively as ‘Fitzy,’ because he is the dorky big brother Leo Fitz deserves  
> hopeless romantic Phillip Coulson
> 
> heavyweight Fitzsimmons and embarrassingly lightweight Antoine Triplett
> 
> Fitz is Catholic/comes from a Catholic background
> 
> Fitzsimmons are not particularly bothered by small displays of public affection. They’re not trying to hide their relationship, and while they understand that there is an appropriate work place demeanor, they also live on a plane with these people. They’re going to kiss in front of them occasionally.


End file.
